I'd Like to Hear About Jerry After Seinfeld

I laughed hard at two jokes:

cotton balls

jackass

Otherwise “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” currently streaming on Netflix, is a mixed experience. We get a sketchy documentary of Jerry's early years intermixed with mostly old routines (the ones he supposedly discarded in “I'm Telling You for the Last Time”) about childhood, sugar cereals, laundry, etc., done by the 60-something billionaire comedian on the stage of The Comic Strip, the small comedy club where he perfected his routine in the '70s.

Does he rush through the routines now? He doesn't seem as comfortable on stage as he used to. Stage actors need to own the stage, to pause as much as they want, to know the audience will wait for them. He doesn't have that anymore. Is he afraid that he's lost it? And by being afraid, has he lost it?

Really, the bigger problem for Seinfeld is that his was observational comedy, and observational comedy doesn't work too well if you're a billionaire. Sure, he tells the one joke about the first time he got a maid, and feeling bad about not picking up after himself (“I'm sorry, I...”), but that's about it. It has to be Jerry before “Seinfeld” because Jerry after “Seinfeld” is ... what? Just a rich asshole with too many cars? What can he tell us about how the .0001% lives? He would have to go beyond his polite observations and he can't even bring himself to rag on Trump. His bit about the insanity of anyone who wants to be president is good:

Who should be the most powerful person in America, the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, the leader of the free world? You know, actually, that sounds like me.

But it leaves open the question of why/how Trump is more insane than most. He's still tiptoeing around the controversial. I guess he always will.

Plus anything new in the culture? Twitter or binge-watching or what have you? He sounds like your grandpa talking about it. He sounds dismissive since he didn't grow up with it. Maybe there's comedy to mine there but right now he's using the wrong pick-axe. The diamond-encrusted kind.